One of my favorite things about living abroad is that even the simple tasks, like going to the grocery store, always end being a learning process and the simple joys in life put a smile on my face. There are somethings I’ve learned to live without (minus peanut butter – I go to a speciality store and pay over $5 for a small jar, ridiculous I know, but I love it) and have grown accustomed to a lot of the local brands. Well anyways, today I went grocery shopping and after months of searching, I finally found oatmeal. I was super excited and grabbed some cinnamon and I started roaming the store looking for the brown sugar. I couldn’t find it so I asked the saleslady for “azucar cafe,” she looked at me with a confused look on her face and shook her head. I walked away roaming the isles continuing to look for it and then she came up to me again because she realized what I was asking for, it’s actually called “azucar moreno,” tan sugar would be the direct translation… ha ha. Even though I make mistakes sometimes, I really do learn something new everyday and I’m loving every second of it.

Paris was actually the first city I visited when I came to Europe, but it’s been four years since then and I’ve been wanting to go back ever since. It snowed and was beyond freezing the whole time Vanessa and I were there, but still absolutely gorgeous. There’s really no city in the world like Paris, the history, architecture, art… it’s beyond breathtaking – J’adore Paris!

After London, Anette traveled back to our favorite city… Barcelona. One of my best friends Vanessa came to visit to spend new years with me and to check out my new home town.

Loving the Christmas decorations!

This year the Barcelona government bought new Christmas lights saying “Merry Christmas” in 15 different languages and they were hung up all over the city. The funny thing is that they forgot to include “Feliz Navidad” or did they? The Spanish government was really mad and accused Barcelona of purposely forgetting to include Spanish since Catalunya is constantly trying to separate themselves from Spain… interesting stuff!

Feliz Navidad?

Yes, this is Obama and yes, he’s pooping. BUT, before you think this is weird, it’s actually a normal Christmas decoration in the Catalan nativity scene. From what I understand, in Catalunya, they believe that the day Jesus was born was like any other normal day, meaning that there was probably a guy pooping in the bushes on Dec. 25th. For that reason, they always hide El Caganer in their nativity scenes and when you go to a Catalan’s home, the first thing you do is look for el caganer. You can find el caganer in the shape of almost any known celebrity or cartoon, Anette asked me to get her an Obama for her birthday :).

Anette's Birthday present

We brought in the new year in Plaza Catalunya, everyone gathered in the center of the city with their bottles of Cava and grapes. In Spain, it’s tradition to eat grapes for good luck on new years eve. They start the countdown 12 seconds before midnight and you eat a grape with each sound of the bell.

I love my sister, especially for her spontaneity, so when she told me that she booked a flight to London and was coming in a week… I was not at all shocked. It was actually the best Christmas present I could have asked for and it definitely helped cure some of my homesickness. Here are some of the highlights from our trip, enjoy!

Buckingham Palace

We're in London, we had to take a cheesy phone booth picture 🙂

Tower Bridge, so much cooler than the London Bridge

View from the top of St Paul's Cathedral... the whisper room was definitely a highlight!

When I booked my fight to Barcelona this summer, I knew I wasn’t going to make it home for Christmas. At the time, I was fine with it, but as the holidays got closer, I really started to miss home – especially my family and friends. Luckily, I have great friends at EADA who were willing to adopt me and take me home for the holidays. All my friends from Germany constantly raved about how amazing Christmas is in their home country, so I when I was invited to spend the holidays with my friend Mag and her family in Germany, I was beyond excited.

It just so happened that the day we were flying out, there was a huge snow storm and many airports were shut down. Less than a half an hour before we were about to land, our airport was shut down due to poor weather conditions and we were relocated to another airport a few hours outside the city. We were then bussed into Dortmund, which took over six hours. Ironically, we ended up spending in total almost 14 hours to get from BCN to Dortmund – the same amount of time it would have taken me to get to L.A. – ha ha.

My first view of Germany

We finally made it to the Christmas market, here we are warming up and sipping on Glühwein (hot spiced red wine).

Dortmund Christmas Market with Alex and Mag

The legendary Christmas market. The streets were filled with gift, food and dessert stands and decked out with holiday decorations.